


Inevitable conclusion

by TheCursedChild



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M, VeryCharloeChristmas2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 02:41:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5522396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCursedChild/pseuds/TheCursedChild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have always been traveling down this path. To take the next step though; They need a Christmas miracle, a blindfold, a ball-gag, a bar fight, and the promise of a new year and new chances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inevitable conclusion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JaqofSpades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/gifts).



> My Very Charloe Christmas story for JaqofSpades, one of my favorite Charloe authors. 
> 
> She has requested: naughty, no fluff, sexual tension, a partnership, awkward presents, reluctant Bass and assertive Charlie...Originally, there were three prompts, and somehow they all ended up here in one fic.
> 
> Jaq,Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a great new year. I can't wait to see what you'll accomplish in 2016, but I hope I get to read some more of your fics, because they (and you) are amazing! I hope you enjoy your present as much as I enjoyed writing it.

“Absolutely not!” Charlie protests loudly.

“Charlie, be reasonable,” Rachel scolds, arms crossed over her chest. Miles is at her side, pleading eyes directed at his niece as they make their request.

“I am being perfectly reasonable,” the young woman says, unconsciously copying her mother’s posture when she really prefers to be as different from her mom as she can possibly be. “I am going to spend my Christmas drinking great booze and getting laid at least twice,” she announces as a matter of fact. Charlie smirks at the discomfort Miles and Rachel show at her unashamed prediction.

“What? You really think I’m going to do surveillance on Christmas, with Monroe, in the freezing snow, so you two can spend it getting all hot and bothered by a nice romantic fire?” She wiggles her eyebrows so nobody can miss her meaning. Internally she shudders and incinerates the image from her mind. Yuck. “I have better things to do.”

“Getting an STD?” Monroe pipes up behind her, and Charlie shoots him a glare. He’s been in her corner during this argument. Bass stands beside her in support of her decision, but apparently can’t help himself when it comes to pushing her buttons.

She jabs her elbow into his side with enough force to bruise a rib, and he only just manages to dodge in time to prevent impact. “Like you haven’t been planning the exact same thing for the holidays,” she sneers, knowing him well enough to be certain she speaks the truth.

“I wasn’t feeling quite as ambitious as you with getting laid twice,” he grins wickedly, “although two lovely ladies at once might be a nice present to get for myself.”

Charlie doesn’t doubt he can and will if given the chance, but can’t fight the urge to take his ego down a peg whenever and wherever she can. “Don’t you mean buy?”

Bass barks out a laugh. “I have no need to buy what is given to me for free. I am curious, however. What would your price be?”

It is a joke. It has to be a joke. Before she can react, though, Miles interrupts, obviously uncomfortable with the direction the two are heading. “Somebody has to take this shift, and it is going to be the two of you. We’ll do the New Year’s shift so you can execute your plans then.” He says ‘plans’ in the most mockingly way possible, knowing that these two do little more than drink and fuck when they’re not busy with fighting a war.

“Sir, yes, Sir,” Charlie salutes as sarcastically as possible.

“Don’t call me ‘sir’. And you should salute with your other hand, as you well know, kid.”

She grins and switches hands. “Ma’am, yes, Ma’am.”

Bass almost doubles over with laughter at that, and by the time he is done, Charlie is gone. Miles is glaring at him just like he did when Bass laughed at his misfortunate bullet wound and couldn’t sit down for weeks without flinching. “That is one hell of a kid you have there,” Bass says, and all three of them are fully aware he is not talking to Rachel. Before they can react he walks away, following Charlie’s footsteps printed on the snow outside.

Their newest safe house is a double hunter’s lodge in the forest north of Norfolk, Virginia. Since Charlie downright refuses to share with her mother and Bass and Rachel are a deadly combination, he gets to share one of the lodges with her.

It has been a great deal of fun. Charlie is not shy, at all. She undresses in front of him, not bothering to hide or ask him to turn around. She sleeps quietly, has a great sense of humor, mocks Rachel relentlessly and best of all; she sleeps in the nude.

Sebastian Monroe is one lucky guy. He gets to look, he gets to joke, he gets to flirt and tease and rarely can even skim his fingers across her skin without it having to mean anything or making any kind of commitment.

And Charlie gives as good as she gets.

Which is why, when Bass opens the door to their cabin, she is exchanging her shirts, and is blissfully naked above the waist, her beautiful locks of hair resting on her back as she rummages around in her duffle for a top.

She hears him enter, and looks up just long enough to confirm that he is staring before she returns to the task at hand. The cold teases her nipples, her breasts the perfect size for his hands. Bass can imagine circling his thumbs and tongue over the perky nubs, knows the sound she will make.

Charlie really doesn’t feel shame when it comes to sex and doesn’t bother being quiet when she comes with breathless moans after a solo adventure in her bed right next to him. He would be crazy not to listen and watch, she certainly doesn’t mind.

Bass is torn, he doesn’t know whether to enjoy his fantasy to the fullest or focus more on the sight in front of him. He keeps thinking ‘we shouldn’t’, and Charlie is hearing him because he knows her frustration is growing with his reluctance to push one step further.  To crawl into her bed and finish the job she so eagerly starts.

There is just a line he can’t seem to cross.

Charlie has long ago decided that enough is enough, and that ‘we shouldn’t’ should become ‘we should’. Her next action after putting on the clean top is to grab her crossbow and a winter jacket and creep closer to her almost lover. He suddenly knows exactly how his food feels just before Charlie puts an arrow through it.

She walks past him, and he lets his guard down, hearing the door close behind him. He’s thinking it is time for a good, long, well-deserved wank when he feels a warm body press against his back, Charlie’s breath warm against his ear.

“There would be no need to buy me, Monroe,” she whispers against his neck, free hand snaking around his body to wrap her fingers around the bulge at the front of his jeans. Charlie nips at the skin she can reach with her teeth and sends a jolt of pleasure all the way down Bass’ spine and to his cock.

In an instant she is gone, and the only indication he has that this actually happened is a fading red mark on his neck where her teeth grazed his skin, and the ghostly imprint of her hardened nipples pressing against his back through two layers of cloth.

He can’t help but think that they really shouldn’t.

So the days pass, Christmas arrives, and there is no progress. Charlie nor Bass have been able to go into town to satisfy their urges and release some tension, and still nothing has happened between them past the usual. Which, honestly, is a lot further than social norms dictate.

The morning is reserved for presents, and while they both have remembered to get everyone something small, Charlie and Bass hadn’t counted on Miles and Rachel coming to their cabin to wake them up.

Luckily the couple is polite enough to knock instead of picking the lock, which means Charlie has about fifteen second to throw on her jeans and shirt while Bass moves to open the door in only his jeans.

Rachel casts a suspicious look around the room, concludes that both beds have been slept in and her daughter is dressed like she sleeps in her clothes, and puts the duffle with presents by the door.

This was not the plan. He had planned to give Charlie her present before they went over to the other cabin and telling the other two mostly the truth. Just a tiny white lie about the actual present. Now, he is going to be facing one very awkward situation, that is either going to end up in laughter or his early demise, depending mostly on Miles’ mood.

Miles and Rachel have already exchanged gifts, stealing Bass’ plan, and so his doom approaches a lot quicker than it should have.

He and Charlie team up in stalling for the last exchange, and Bass suddenly notices that the woman’s eyes are shining in amusement. She is prolonging his suffering and enjoying it.

“So,” Bass says when they reach the inevitable conclusion of Christmas morning before their stake-out two miles north has to begin. “I came across this and thought of you,” Charlie finishes his sentence, and it looks like she’s seconds away from full-blown laughter.

She snatches her gift from his hand and throws his onto his lap, settling back patiently and waiting for him to go first.  He tears away the newspaper wrapping and finds a blindfold.

Rachel and Miles both frown in confusion when Bass winds the strap around his finger and lifts it to eye-height. Bass is not confused at all. This is Charlie through and through. The blindfold is her way of sneaking up on him on yet another level. She sees him as prey, a challenge. She doesn’t want him to know when or how she’ll touch him, doesn’t want him to anticipate and stop her with the last of the goodness in his heart, but to cross that one last line and enjoy it blindly and without fearing the consequences.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Rachel exclaims, not sure what this means exactly, but sure enough to realize the intended purpose for this particular gift.

Charlie holds up a finger to silence her mother and opens her last gift, grinning in elation as she unveils the black ball-gag.

“Bass?” Miles questions with a strangled voice, not really prepared to see his best friend and Charlie giving each other sex toys for Christmas.

“Gotta run, Miles. You know how it is, stake-outs take up a lot of time,” Bass hastily babbles while he pulls two coats from the rack, grabs Charlie by the wrist and drags her out the door before Miles or Rachel has caught up on reality.

They make it just past the tree line before Charlie collapses with laughter. “Your face,” she splutters, gasping for air as she struggles to stay on her feet. “And Miles. Ha,” she exclaims, probably loud enough to be heard by the two in the cabin. “I think you traumatized him for good this time.”

Bass can’t help but laugh with her. After all, it was supposed to be a gag gift all along, both literally and figuratively. Another tease to drive her up the hill just a tiny bit further, laden with hidden meaning as well.

They don’t speak off it on the way to their stake-out, snow crunching beneath their boots. The whole day spend there is going to be a bust. They’ve already done the recon on this camp and simply don’t have the manpower to attack it yet. It’s Rachel who insisted they keep an eye on it because the holidays are important to everyone and something big might happen that they can take advantage of. Charlie and Bass disagree, but in an effort to be nice to Miles, swallow their pride and listen.

Or at least, that was Bass’ plan. Charlie keeps heading south where she should have been turning east. “Where are you going?” he asks, annoyed when she doesn’t stop or even acknowledge him.

He catches up with her, gloved hand wrapped around her waist, and pulls her back against his chest, immediately overwhelmed by the scent of her hair teasing his senses.

She doesn’t give him a moment to regret it, using his bodyweight against him and throwing him down onto the floor, straddling his hips. Adrenaline kicks in, and he uses his extensive knowledge of fighting and restrictive holds to turn the tables on Charlie, who moves with the roll.

The young woman, no matter how experienced a fighter, does not stand a chance once President Sebastian Monroe has her in his grip. It is a good thing, then, that she feels completely safe and unthreatened in the knowledge that he will back off if she asks him to.

“The camp is that way, Charlie,” he informs her even though he knows perfectly well that she is purposefully going towards town instead.

“Nothing is going to happen at that camp, and I am going to the bar exactly like I planned. You’re perfectly welcome to come with and arrange your threesome, but we are not going to spend Christmas lying in the snow staring at a camp in the dark. And you are most certainly not going to stay out there alone.”

“Protecting my virtue, are you, Charlotte?”

She’s pinned to the cold ground, her hair getting wet with melted snow. She raises her hips up, wrapping her legs around his waist and crossing her ankles, clinging to Bass.

“Protecting your life, yes,” she whispers in his ear, rolling her hips up, rubbing against him purposefully, “Your virtue more likely needs protection from me.” She looks him in the eye and kisses him.

It’s absolutely glorious. They have the chemistry, the passion, the closest thing to love either of them is capable of, and plenty of sexual tension and frustration to spare.

And somehow, even with all that, Monroe manages to regain control of both body and mind and pulls away, letting her wrists go and backing away a good three paces. He’s breathing hard, and so is she, still lying in the snow, feeling the urge to bang her head against the nearest hard surface.

“What the hell is stopping you, Monroe?” she practically screams at him, annoyed, frustrated and increasingly horny despite the cold seeping into her bones. He had made no secret of wanting her, but acting on his feelings seems to be out of his reach

“Look, Charlie. Everything is fun and games until it gets serious, and I am not nearly stable enough to risk that with you.”

She laughs, rising from the ground and staying exactly where she is, arms crossed in a defensive position across her chest. “You really think that us fucking is going to fuck us both up even more? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve both gone past our breaking point already. I don’t think there is any way we can get worse.”

“You’re wrong.”

“No!” she argues back vehemently. “You are scared. I know you, Bass. You lost your family twice, have been betrayed by your best friend, faced execution and assassination and your city got nuked. You don’t want to lose anybody else, I understand that, none of us do. But you already have me and you already love me, so what is the harm?”

“The harm,” he grinds out through his teeth, “Is that you might no longer be suicidal, but these days you drink and fuck your way into forgetting, and that’s fine.” He does the same after all, and has practiced those bad habits for years before she even had her first drink. “But whatever you feel for me is not going to be forgotten by fucking it out of your system, Charlotte. I won’t let it.”

“Fine,” she says, knowing that the argument is going nowhere but her inevitable loss. She restarts her track towards town, realizing that she is going to do exactly as Monroe predicted; fuck and forget.

He follows her, out of concern and worry, and selfishly because he has quite similar purposes as she does, only he does not wish to forget, but to unleash his rage.

She doesn’t even bother trying to make him jealous this time. It’s never worked on him, and right now she just wants to pretend he doesn’t exist at all.

Christmas just hurts, and she doesn’t think any of them really realize how much it pains her to see people trying to keep the holiday alive after the Blackout. It gives them the hope they need to be happy, but hope for her only ever manifests in despair.

She can’t celebrate family when her brother and father are dead, being good when she has killed dozens this year alone, innocence which she lost a long time ago, or health when she is borderline depressed and suffers from paralyzing night terrors.

Monroe is her selfish solution. She can’t feel bad when he is quite possibly one of the worst people left on the planet. He is more damaged than she is, and he knows it. But he also knows exactly what she has been hoping.

Sleeping with Monroe is her end-game. Her last hope that whatever she feels for him will disappear when she has drowned them both in sex and alcohol. And because he feels the same, because he loves her, he won’t allow her to do that.

He wants them to be each other’s light, to be strong together when she can only see weakness if she lets him get any closer. Bass feels too much where she feels too little, and where he lost his mind, she gives away her body.

She hasn’t been fair to him. Charlie knows this, and can’t feel guilty for it. Nothing and nobody has ever been fair to either of them, and she and Bass just share too much history to change that even just between them.

Monroe drops into the bar stool next to her, stealing the flask she had claimed and downing nearly a quarter. She shrugs off her coat, hanging it from her seat and starts playing with a toothpick for a lack of anything better to do. She’ll have to finish the bottle first to even consider seducing anyone her with any kind of success.

The liquor flows steadily between them and the glass is empty in record time. Bass signals the young bartender for another, carefully not looking at her. 

Which is why things start going wrong. Bass would’ve noticed the exposed brand on her arm immediately and told her to cover it if he’d been looking. Now, Charlie has exposed it right there on the bar, too focused on the toothpick to realize the danger she’s put herself in.

The man behind the bar has his shotgun in hand and pointed at Charlie before she has even blinked, and everybody in the vicinity immediately backs off. “Monroe’s people are not welcome in my bar. Get out or get shot,” he snarls.

“Fine,” Charlie sneers back, climbing off her stool and landing almost steadily on her feet, a buzz humming in her body that slows her down just enough to notice.

Bass copies her movement, departing his seat and getting ready to leave. “You don’t have to go, man. The gun’s going as soon as she’s out the door,” he tries to calm Monroe, having seen the pouch of diamonds he carries.

Monroe smirks, checking out the barman’s grip on the rusting rifle and his stance, seeing inexperience and nerves in every line of his body. “If you don’t want my people in your bar, I very much doubt you want me here,” he laughs, a cruel expression fleeting across his face, and attacks.

He disarms the barman with mocking ease and slams it against the bar. The thing cracks in two at impact, and Monroe laughs again, baring his tattoo for all the world to see. Scarred as the logo is now, if you know what to look for, there is no mistaking the only real identifying mark they could find on Monroe.

People are backing off, some running out the door at the other side of the building. “Really?” Charlie says exasperated, tugging her coat back on and grabbing another bottle, not bothering to pay. “Fucking over bar fights, you idiot. Now we’re exposed.”

“We would have been exposed anyway once you got to getting pretty boy barman upstairs.” They don’t make an effort to keep quiet, the crowd listening along to their argument.

“Just because you don’t want me doesn’t mean nobody else does,” she stalks toward him, fists clenched at her side.

“They don’t want you once they know you’ve been marked by me,” he smirks infuriatingly, and totally deserves the punch she lands. Charlie had aimed at the soft tissue of his stomach, and he doubles over at the force of it, too smug to bother and block the attack.

He does retaliate, using his stance to grab her leg and pull it out from under her. She moves with it, trying to crash her foot against his chin. He forces her leg to stop half-way, moving carefully so he doesn’t sprain her knee, and pushes her back. There is not five feet between them.

Charlie grabs her crossbow from beside her former stool, and Bass arms himself with his twin blades. Charlie is at a clear disadvantage with her long-distance weapon, and is the first who realizes exactly what they are doing. She lowers her bow, frustrated with the way they always manage to wind each other up.

He’s tracing her movement with his eyes, cautious and alert. “Come on, Monroe. Let’s get out of here before one of them reaches whatever law enforcement works around here.”

Bass nods tersely and follows her out the door, swords still out and ready for use against the crowd. It’s lucky they haven’t been in Texas for so long, because everyone there would’ve had a gun, where here nobody even bothered to carry, let alone draw.

It’s dark as they trudge back to the cabins, secure in the knowledge that nobody knows where they are hiding and nobody is in pursuit. Both lost in their own thoughts, their inner turmoil.

The cabin is freezing when they get inside and stash weapons where they are easily accessed but won’t do any harm. Charlie kicks of her boots and sits down on her twin bed, keeping her coat on to protect her against the cold while Bass starts a fire.

“We’re going to have to talk about this sometime, Bass,” she urges him from where she is sitting. He has his back turned toward her so he can tend to the fire place, but she can see his shoulders tense.

“There’s very little to talk about, Charlotte,” he says in clipped tones. He makes his way to his own bed, crawling under the covers with his clothes still on waiting for the fire to get the temperature up.

They face each other, light from the flames enabling them to actually see each other on the dark Christmas evening. It doesn’t feel like a holiday, if anything, today was more tiring than any other day of the month.

“I might be willing to agree that sleeping together is not going to make our problem go away, but obviously this isn’t working either and you know it.” Charlie gets up and moves over to Monroe’s bed, perching herself on the edge somewhere near his stomach.

“The problem is that those are our only options,” Bass intervenes, propping himself up with his elbows. Charlie is shedding her jacket, throwing it in the direction of the coat hangers.

“How about we meet somewhere in the middle first?” she suggests, reaching over to take off his coat as well. He suspiciously lets her, unsure of where she is going with this.

“And where exactly is that?” She doesn’t answer as her jeans follow into the same general direction of the coat. He stares, as he always does, finding her surprisingly modest when she keeps her top and underwear on, and feeling relieved as well.

She crawls next to him under the covers, lying down carefully against Monroe’s clothed body. She grabs his wrist and wraps his arm around her, getting warmer already. “Maybe just this for now,” she whispers quietly, “until you can trust me.”

And isn’t it strange of her to ask him  instead of the other way around. Charlie, who not all that long ago hated Monroe and everything he stood for, now trusts him more than probably anyone else. They have fought and bled and almost died for each other, entrusted one another with both mind and body, and she cannot imagine what life would be like without him.

He is the one who doesn’t trust her, because he’s already gone over the edge and come back from it. He recognizes that she might not recklessly endanger herself to the point of suicide anymore, but is still a long way from climbing  back over that edge.

And she can’t fool him into trusting her, he knows her too well. All Charlie can do is actually make herself trustworthy. He might have been steadily be refusing her advances, but she is the one that is holding them back from the potential of what they could be like together.

So it starts. Charlie refuses to sleep in her clothing or anything resembling pajamas, is not anymore ashamed of her body, like Bass is not ashamed of appreciating it. They do however, have the unspoken agreement to stop sleeping around as long as they need to figure them out.

Instead, they almost platonically (were it not for Charlie’s protest against wearing anything at night,) share one of the twin beds each night, his arm around her waist, hand splayed over her flat stomach.

It doesn’t seem like a big change at first, but where on one hand they get more comfortable with each other without any sexually charged touching going on, it is on the other hand that the lack of release increases the tension between them with alarming speed.

Celibacy is not a good look on either of them. They fight harder, kill quicker, and show very little mercy. Miles and Rachel take notice, though they say little on the subject, unsure whether it is a natural progression or something has gone wrong.

This all happens in the space of a week.

They’re dangerous and lethal, to themselves and to others, and Bass knows he has to put a stop to their escalation if he wants their group of four to make it into the new year alive. A few hours may not seem like a lot, but he knows exactly how little time life needs to go spectacularly wrong. A minute is enough to lose a wife and child. A second all it needs for a car horn to sound and a family to die.

As promised, Rachel and Miles have taken the shift for today, not knowing that Charlie and Bass never even started theirs. They are alone, worked up, bristling with energy and no way to let it out.

“Want to spar?” Charlie asks him, pacing across the few feet she can, spinning a bolt between her fingers with incredible skill and boredom.

Bass, who has been relaxing on the bed, sharpening his blades, puts them away. Charlie, assuming he agrees, heads for the door, one hand on the handle when Bass covers it with his.

The grip is intentionally not confining or restricting, it is soft and kind. It is loving. He embraces her sweetly, and she freezes in his arms, letting him remove the bolt from her fingers as he guides her away from the door.

His plan tonight has been months in the making, and he cannot start it off with violence and anger filled sparring. He doesn’t want to hurt her tonight more than he already has in the past decade.

Charlie is staring at him, a puzzled look on her face. She doesn’t get what he is doing, or rather how or why he is doing it. Despite her age and experience, all the young Matheson has ever done is fuck. She hasn’t ever been in love, and she hasn’t made love before.

It’s overwhelming for her body and mind to be treated this kindly, especially by him. They expect a harshness from each other that is laden with the history they share.

But they do love each other. Maybe not traditionally, and nobody would dare to call it pure or true, but it binds them together in the same breath it tears them apart. All he can do to keep her, is accept that, and just make sure she does too. He needs to make her not want to forget her love for him.

And he does. He lays her down on the bed, tries to remember the last time he actually made love, thinks back all the way to Shelley. But they are two different women, and he feels a lot different with Charlie than he ever did with her. He will learn just as much as Charlie will tonight.

They gaze at each other, unsure of the next move. Charlie snaps first, her tolerance and patience with Bass long gone. She rolls them around, pins him to the bed with her thighs and crashes her lips onto his.

The action is familiar to her, and so are Monroe’s lips, though he isn’t matching either her pace or rhythm. He is going slower, his grip a lot more gentle compared to her fingers digging bruises into his skin.

She draws back, confused, and looks at Bass, trying to figure out what game he’s playing this time. “I won’t let you forget, Charlotte,” he warns her, giving all the explanation she’s asked for.

He kisses her again, in the same way, contend to lay beneath her as she test her boundaries. All he has to do is wait her out, which is growing harder and harder just like his cock. She’s relentless, grinding against his length as she explores his mouth with mindless intent.

It speaks of how much he wants to keep her, that he is able to resist and control himself for this amount of time. He keeps his fingers tangled in her hair, enabling him to pull her back slightly whenever she goes too far. His free hand is resting on her hip, stroking her bare skin.

He doesn’t need to dominate her to show her this, and she needs to learn that making love can be both hard and fast, just as it can be slow and sweet. But she needs to compromise first. Charlie has to want to love him.

Charlie only has to realize it, because she already wants to, so much that she is as scared as she accused Bass of being. “Slow down,” he whispers in her ear, tearing his lips away from hers long enough that he can nibble at her earlobe.

She does, and so he starts undoing her unchallenged dominance, creating partnership and compromise where before one of them has always had the upper hand. It is strange to be equal with Charlie. They have always been unbalanced, both in mind and relationship.

Now, as their tongues dance and their hands roam, he cannot imagine a better feeling than this. It’s like Charlie is the gravity pulling him back from whatever place he has been floating around, lost and drowning.

“Eyes on me, Charlotte,” he requests once their clothes are off and he is positioned at her entrance, “Don’t you dare to try and forget.” He’s pretty sure by now that she won’t, so close, but not insane with lust. Her eyes are clear and focused on him, and he lifts her hips and pushes inside.

Charlie moans, nails scratching at his shoulders as he starts thrusting shallowly. This is the most intimate and amazing sex she has ever had. Pure perfection that she wants to experience for the rest of her life; However long that may be.

And she will, because she has Bass, who loves her, and she wants him to, because she loves him back. The New Year will be full of new chances. The past may never leave them, but they have a future ready to be written.

In it, they will stand side by side.


End file.
